Pro Valorant invitational Red Bull Home Ground is set to return for its third iteration this year in Manchester, UK.
It will bring together some of the world’s top teams to battle it out for victory in a unique ‘Home and Away’ format, from December 9th to 11th 2022.
As an official part of the VCT off-season tournaments, it will bring eight teams from across the globe to battle it out, and two qualifier spots for teams to earn a chance to test their mettle on the global stage.
And for the first time, teams from North America are set to make their debut as they join the Home-and-Away fray to pit themselves against EMEA’s best teams.
The event will take place in a venue steeped in recent live event history as Red Bull Home Ground comes to the heartbeat of the Manchester music scene – Victoria Warehouse. It will feature a futuristic neon underground aesthetic, a live audience and broadcast in several languages online.
The event will also be broadcast by a variety of co-streamers in multiple languages, with details to be revealed soon.
UK-based business Gfinity is providing production services to broadcast the live event, along with providing the outside broadcasting TV facilities and infrastructure. Gfinity also partnered with Red Bull on pre-event content plan to promote and drive interest in the live event, including content shot in the UK and Turkey to go out on the Red Bull Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok and YouTube channels.
In Red Bull Home Ground’s best-of-five matches, both teams pick a ‘home ground’ to play on for the opening two maps. Rewarding tactical awareness, map knowledge and wider map usage, if a team wins both opening home and away matches, they automatically win the tie, while a stalemate will default the tie to the traditional best of format.
Red Bull Home Ground will see EMEA vs NA rivalries reignited again after September’s Valorant Champions 2022 (which Fnatic have qualified for) in Istanbul.
Looking toward the event, Red Bull player and last year’s Red Bull Home Ground MVP, Mehmet Yağız ‘cNed’, said:
“Being on Red Bull Home Ground was fun for our team. Last year, I gave it my all to earn the title of tournament MVP, and this year, my team and I are prepared to top that effort. Wait for it.”
cNed, Acend
The event is another Red Bull Valorant activity alongside Red Bull Campus Clutch – an open global Valorant tournament for students.
Red Bull Home Ground has teamed up with gaming monitor brand AGON by AOC as the Official Monitor Partner for the event, and AMD as Technology Provider.
The first two Red Bull Home Ground 2021 events took place in London.
Red Bull Home Ground will be broadcast from Victoria Warehouse in Manchester live on Red Bull’s Twitch channel and Red Bull’s YouTube channel. Interested teams from EMEA can check out the Red Bull Home Ground 2022 open qualifier here. Closed Turkish qualifiers will also be held. Check out redbull.com/homeground for more information.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
